Orpheus in the Underground – Coatsworth Toussaintz
Among the hundreds of films dealing with the Harlem Renaissance churned out by Hollywood over the last seventy-five years, only one has stood the test of time – Toussaintz’ Orpheus in the Underground. Once it was the Marxist critics who reviled this masterpiece for its Pollyannaish denial of the proletarian underpinnings of Harlem’s Golden Age. Now it is the LGBT community, which takes umbrage at the film’s macabre middle section, in which every single one of the four furies is a cisgender female. For those of us for whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s cherished motto, ars gratia artis, is not a mere slogan, but a cri de coeur, Coatsworth Toussaintz' Orpheus in the Underground is a glimpse into a long-lost world where the exquisite expression of harmony and balance trumps petty political and social peeves.
Among the hundreds of films dealing with the Harlem Renaissance churned out by Hollywood over the last seventy-five years, only one has stood the test of time – Toussaintz’ Orpheus in the Underground. Once it was the Marxist critics who reviled this masterpiece for its Pollyannaish denial of the proletarian underpinnings of Harlem’s Golden Age. Now it is the LGBT community, which takes umbrage at the film’s macabre middle section, in which every single one of the four furies is a cisgender female. For those of us for whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s cherished motto, ars gratia artis, is not a mere slogan, but a cri de coeur, Coatsworth Toussaintz' Orpheus in the Underground is a glimpse into a long-lost world where the exquisite expression of harmony and balance trumps petty political and social peeves.